“Shango, why do you believe that you may not be able to fulfill your part of the bargain?”
“Because...” Shango falls silent for so long that Dakar, who had shown remarkable patience when he discovered that all the drinks were nonalcoholic, growls. “Because I am afraid.”
This is the last thing that anyone who knows the debonair African athanor would have expected him to say. Bluster is more his style, or charm, or, failing that, a surge of temper that might rival Ogun’s. Never would they expect him to admit to feeling fear.
Anson asks carefully. “Of what are you afraid?”
“Of the King of the World.”
Eddie clears his throat inquiringly.
“He means,” Dakar says, his voice soft, like a child talking about a bogeyman, “Shopona, the God of Smallpox.”
“We have seen signs of his presence,” Anson admits, “but what does this have to do with our plans to sell Nigerian oil to the Japanese?”
Shango fingers a heavy gold hoop hanging from one of his earlobes.
“Shopona came to me—or I should say, a man claiming to be Shopona came to me. He had heard rumors, he said, from underlings in the city government, rumors that I was setting up a great investment plan. He wanted to be involved. Naturally, I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about.”
“Naturally,” Dakar prompts mildly. Mention of the smallpox has reminded him of the petitions crowding his shrine, of how little he can do for those who appeal—however misguidedly—to him for aid. Here is news of a real enemy. Hearing it, he becomes as patient as any good hunter must be if he hopes to take his prey.
“Modern medicine had taken his Kingdom from the King of Heaven,” Shango continues, “or so I believed.”
“Me, too,” Eddie says. “That’s been bothering me ever since Anson and I saw the signs. I’m certain that the World Health Organization announced the defeat of smallpox in the 1980s. I don’t think they even vaccinate babies for it anymore.”
“So this man—he called himself Regis—said, but he said that he had the means of starting an epidemic. His family, it seems, had long been worshipers of Shopona and had preserved infectious matter against the King’s defeat. If I continued to refuse him, Regis said he would begin an epidemic right here in Monamona and many would die.”
Shango shrugs. “I thought him insane. You would have, too, this ugly reddish-haired man, half-white, half-black, and the worst of both worlds. He spoke as if he was educated, but as if he knew the old religion, too. Yet when I scoffed at his claims, he did what he had threatened. Now his altars are buried beneath sacrifices, and people die.”
Anson crushes his empty soda can between his fingers. “Is he one of us—an athanor?”
“I don’t think so,” Shango replies. “If he is, he is well disguised, for I do not recall meeting him.”
“I wish we had a wizard here who could tell us,” Anson says, “so that we would know if the Accord protects him.”
“The Accord is not designed to protect those who do such things!” Dakar protests.
“No,” Eddie agrees, speaking as the voice of Arthur, upholder of that very Accord, “but it does give any athanor the right to a trial in front of his or her peers.”
“Fuck trials!” Dakar growls.
“In this case,” Eddie says, “all my sympathies are with you. Let’s hope that we don’t find out that this King of Heaven is athanor.”
Shango nods. “I agree, but I do not know of anyone local who has the talent to tell who is and who is not athanor.”
“Maybe,” Anson says, “we can bring someone in—if it comes to that.”
“I think it must come to that,” Shango says. “I cannot calmly sit here and discuss oil deals while my city is ravaged. I think only the vaccinations given in the late 1960s have kept the disease from spreading more widely.”
“That is quite possible,” Anson says. “And I didn’t think you could just sit.”
“Nor can I,” Dakar states.
“Nor,” says Eddie with a deliberate pause, “can I.”
“Nor can I,” Anson admits. “I simply did not wish to force any of you into a dangerous course of action.”
“Then we are agreed,” Shango asks eagerly, “to destroy this Regis?”
“Definitely,” Anson says. “That will be our first order of business, eh?”
“But what will,” Shango looks about, as if realizing for the first time that Katsuhiro is not occupying the chair prepared for him, “our Japanese colleague think?”
Anson spreads his hands wide. “Remember how I told you that we had difficulties, too? That is our difficulty. Katsuhiro Oba has been kidnapped.”
Shango frowns. “Kidnapped? Are you certain?”
“Certain. He vanished from the Lagos airport. We found no trace of him after that. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”
“I do not think I ever mentioned him to my associates by name, only that I might have found a foreign investor,” Shango says. “I am certain I did not mention him, for the Japanese connection was to be our great secret. However, I did mention you a time or two. There seemed no harm in that since we have done small business before.”
Anson purses his lips thoughtfully. “Did you mention that I would be bringing that foreign investor?”
Closing his eyes to concentrate, Shango says woefully, “Yes, I believe that I did.”
“Then an ambitious person could have learned of Katsuhiro through one of my associates.” Anson’s features crease in pain. “The hotelkeeper Adam and his wife, Teresa, are also missing. I told them to prepare for a Japanese guest. This cannot be a coincidence.”
“No.”
The four men sit in gloomy silence, then Shango again surges to his feet, his features suddenly lit by a vicious smile.
“If Regis has taken them, I know where he must be holding them.” He turns off the room light and pulls back the curtain.
“There.”
Shango points toward a blocky shape, just visible in the night.
“That is Regis’s stronghold, a veritable fortress. It was constructed during the oil boom by one of General Yakubu Gowon’s cronies. After Gowon was overthrown in 1975, the building was abandoned for being too associated with tainted policies. It has passed through various hands over the years, but now I happen to know it has a new owner: the King of Hot Water himself.”
“Then,” Dakar says, more excited by the prospect of warfare than by any deep feeling for his fellow athanor, “we must break in there and get Katsuhiro out, and kill this King.”
Eddie shakes his head. “Regis has one disease at his command. What else might he have? We cannot do anything overt unless we are certain that we disable his defenses.”
“Spoilsport!” Dakar snorts. Then he shakes his head, unable to forget those laden altars. “But this time you are right.”
Anson nods agreement. “We all must concur on this. To be impulsive would be to condemn people far more fragile than ourselves to this Regis’s vengeance.”
“Even if we can’t attack at once, we can begin scouting out his fortress,” Shango insists. “Can any of you shift shape?”
Anson nods. “I have a few shapes and a few illusions, but none are terribly powerful or terribly resistant to harm. Still, they will give us an edge.”
“Will you go tonight?”
“After we leave here,” Anson promises, “but first we must depart with the same care that you directed we arrive, eh?”
“Na,” Shango agrees, “we don’t want to be defeated before we begin.”
Impulsively, Dakar thrusts out one beefy black hand. Three other hands grasp his in a gesture of solidarity.
“That’s right,” Eddie says. “All for one and one for all!”
“And,” Anson says with a return to his usual irreverent humor, “thus we shall make the King of Heaven fall!”
Shahrazad goes to sleep unhappy the night following her father’s departure. She had thought
herself forgiven for her trespass into the wolf pack’s territory, but now she learns that her punishment is to be far worse than any beating. The Changer is going to leave her.
The Changer had taken her hunting that morning, had shown her a new trick for disguising her scent trail, had even shown her that a coyote could climb a tree, if the tree was slanted just a bit. That had amused her greatly.
It had been while they were up in a tree, their forepaws dangling to either side of the limb on which they rested, that he had explained that he was going away for a while.
He had told her that he was no longer angry with her for the encounter with the wolves, had told her that he was only leaving so that she would learn what to do when he would not be with her, but Shahrazad had known the truth.
Her father is so angry with her that he is abandoning her.
Shahrazad has memories of other times her father has left her, but those times she had always stayed with Arthur at his hacienda. Even there she had not been safe. She shudders her skin at the memory of being taken away, tied up to a tree in the darkness. Can that happen again?
The Changer must have known of her fears, but he has left her anyway, has winged off into the afternoon sunlight on dark raven’s wings. Even Frank’s reassurances that he will continue to care for her are not any comfort. After darkness falls without bringing the Changer back, Shahrazad goes out into one of the pastures and sings her sorrow to a starlit sky.
No one answers.
Noticing Pearl the unicorn listening, Shahrazad retreats inside the ranch house. The rug beneath the chair in which the Changer often sat when he talked with Frank still bears some of his scent. She curls up there, nose beneath her tail, and dreams.
Daylight: pale blue, cooler white, like light filtered through clouds, then cast on fresh snow. Shahrazad trots down the hallway toward the Door. As always it is closed.
After her routine attempt to open it, an attempt that fails as always before, she is about to turn away and return to her bed when a scent tantalizes her. She takes a deeper sniff, casting about to make certain of the source but finally she is certain.
The Changer! He is behind that door!
Whining high and eager, acting like a barely weaned pup who smells a meal, she scratches again at the door. It doesn’t open.
She collapses onto her side, puts her nose near the crack beneath it, wuffs deep to draw in the air from the other side.
Yes! There, mingled with scents of pine boards, wool rug, Frank’s boots, and various other common household scents is that of her father.
But there is something not quite right about it, an intermingling of blood. His blood! She has smelled this before, when he traded his eye for her safety. Has he done this thing again?
Furious and panicked, she digs at the carpet outside the door, flings her shoulder against the wood, leaps and falls back until she is battered and bruised. Still she strives to rescue her father—then he will forgive her and stay with her always.
She hears footsteps on the carpet, feels the vibrations of Frank MacDonald’s approach, and stops her frantic attempts. He must not see her, must not know, or he will stop her!
She cringes, looking for a place to hide, but Frank is looking down at her now, bending to lift her by her scruff as if she was but the merest pup and he as tall as the ceiling.
“What’s wrong, Shahrazad?” he booms. “What’s wrong?”
“Shahrazad?”
The coyote trembles beneath the human hand laid upon her shoulders. Fearfully, she opens her eyes, for, contrary to what her memory is telling her, she is not suspended in the air, but still on the floor where she had fallen asleep.
Frank MacDonald kneels next to her, clad in a cat-hair-covered old bathrobe and dog-chewed slippers. His strong hand strokes gently along her spine.
“Bad dream, pup?” he commiserates in a soft voice. “We all have them, time to time.”
He pats her, then scoops her up, not in an undignified fashion, but carefully, as she has seen him carry one of the house cats. She does not wonder that he can lift her so easily. In her mind, she is a frightened pup; he is the adult.
Still carrying her, Frank pads into the kitchen, where he warms her some bread and cheese. After she has eaten this—slowly, as if she is still in her dream, rather than in two quick gulps as would be her wont—he carries her into his bedroom.
He has a large bed. It is already occupied by assorted cats, the clouded leopard, and one of the dogs, but he finds room to set Shahrazad down before taking off his robe and slippers and sliding under the covers.
“There now,” Frank says, reaching out and patting her again. “No need to have nightmares. You’re among friends.”
Shahrazad, meeting the sleepy gaze of a dark red tabby as yellow-eyed as her father, is comforted. She shoves her nose against Frank and drinks in his scent. He smells of human, of the soap with which he washed before bedtime, of the animals he tends, and, beneath it all, of something else.
Too tired to puzzle this out, Shahrazad embraces sleep. Tonight, she knows, there will be no more nightmares.
9
When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?
—Montaigne
Once again, the filthy cell is dark. By now, however, Katsuhiro’s eyes have become so well adjusted to the poor light that he hardly notices. His thoughts are on Adam.
They have talked only a little since Adam requested that Katsuhiro kill him. At first the Japanese had interpreted the African’s silence as expressing fear or regret. Later, when the guard refilled his bucket, he had offered Adam more water.
Adam had almost refused to drink. That was when Katsuhiro had realized that Adam’s silence was one of waiting. He would not press Katsuhiro further, but he was ready to die.
And what other choice does he have? Alive, he is a hostage against his wife’s actions. Only by a miracle can he hope to escape Regis’s prison and even if he did, only by another miracle would he recover from his injuries. Faced with the choice of an ignominious death or one with its own peculiar heroism, Adam has made his choice.
As Katsuhiro now perceives the situation, he himself has no more choice than does a sword in the hands of a skilled swordsman. He is the weapon by which Adam will meet the death he has already chosen.
He says nothing to Adam of his decision, only offers him water, listens when he wishes to talk, and waits for night to fall. From his experience during the preceding three days, he knows that the guards grow lazy once the prisoners have been fed their dinner.
Of course, neither he nor Adam is accorded this privilege, but the more base of the guards delight in teasing them with elaborate verbal descriptions of the delights that await their fellow prisoners. One guard, whose cruelty is a crude mimicry of Regis’s own, even goes so far as to push a bowl of some delicious-smelling concoction just through the slot in the cell door.
Knowing that the bowl will be withdrawn as soon as he moves toward it, Katsuhiro refuses to even acknowledge its presence. Infuriated, the guard takes the bowl away, then sits outside the door sucking up the contents with elaborate moans of delight.
But when darkness falls, the guards grow tired of such games. They retire to an anteroom at the end of the hallway, near the base of the stairs. There they play cards or ayo or brag about their exploits. Hearing a particularly heated argument developing, Katsuhiro acts.
Rising to his feet in a single graceful movement, he pads noiselessly across the cell to where Adam lies. The African’s snores, loud because of damage to his bruised—possibly broken—nose, reassure Katsuhiro that he is sound asleep.
After folding his suit jacket into a rectangular pad, Katsuhiro kneels next to the sleeping man and presses the fabric against his mouth and nose, holding it firmly but lightly so that Adam will not awaken before he suffocates.
This is not as noble a death as seppuku, but to Katsuhiro’s way of seeing things, it is much the same. Adam, by making hi
s choice to die rather than permit continued dishonor in his name, has already slashed his sword through his bowels. Katsuhiro with his folded jacket has assumed the role of the second whose quick follow-through with his own sword severs the dying man’s head to permit him to die with ease and dignity.
In a minute or so, it is over. When Katsuhiro removes his jacket, Adam is dead. The fabric is slightly damp, probably soiled beyond recovery, so Katsuhiro lifts Adam’s head and rests it on the folded jacket as on a pillow. The guards are fools. They will not look closely at the circumstances.
Then he rocks back on his heels and bows his head as if in prayer, though long ago he had lost the belief that there was anyone to pray to beyond himself.
In this attitude, he does not see the large spider that lowers itself by an invisible thread to examine the body. Nor does he notice the spider’s tears.
Morning in southwestern Colorado: A florid man with a bulbous nose and thick, scraggly brows sits in the passenger seat of a four-wheel-drive pickup truck. In the driver’s seat is a man wearing the neat jeans and button-down shirt of a government employee dressed for a day in the field.
“This is the parcel, Wayne,” the government man says. “It hasn’t been grazed for years. There’s water and not much traffic. You should be able to set your herds out without any of those environmental busybodies knowing a thing.”
Wayne Watkins nods sagely, chewing on the inside of his lip. He’s only half-listening to what the man is saying. The days of easy access to government lands, days he remembers so fondly, are over now. That is, the ease is over, but not the access, not for a man who knows which palms to grease.
“It isn’t great,” he mutters, turning his head slightly so that he can watch the government man without the man being able to read his expression—a task made easier by the tinted sunglasses he always wears, “and I suppose I’ll have to deal with interlopers.”
“Well, it is public land,” the government man says defensively, “so there may be the occasional hiker or camper, but this isn’t exactly prime territory. There aren’t any facilities for miles. The closest private landowner is a horse rancher named Frank MacDonald.”
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